September 2: Habits of This Life, Sister's Car, Linda Gregg, "17399 Edgewood Road, Fayetteville, Arkansas," Adventures of Stickman

That had all happened long ago, and a few weeks before another Christmas Ives awoke in the bedroom of his apartment on Ninety-third Street as a much older man and recalled how for years he would get up for work at seven in the morning, and swear that he could hear his son, Robert, whistling the theme to The Andy Griffith Show in the hallway, as he used to in the days when he delivered newspapers.  Ives would dress, half expecting to find the boy in the hall, ready to start his morning's work regardless of the weather; or he would hear Bach sung faintly through his door, or find one of the books his son had been reading in the living room, left casually open on the couch as if he had just been reading it again.  And although he would think, "Caroline," another part of him imagined his boy, nostalgic for the habits of this life, materializing from the hereafter.

You can't get around the fact that Ives is a haunted man.  His son, Robert, is around him all the time.  Ives hears him in the mornings as he's getting ready for work.  Everything reminds him of Robert.  Books.  Music.  Weather.  In the midst of his overwhelming grief, Ives wants to feel his son's presence again.  He's chasing ghosts.

For the past couple days, my car has been out of commission.  So I have been driving my sister's car.  It's a strange feeling, because many of my sister's belongings are still in the car, including a picture of my daughter in her gymnastics uniform when she was around eight years old.  As I drive down the highway, I think about how many times my sister drove the same route, over and over, every day for the past twenty years. 

Last night, I was driving home near dusk.  It was a warm night, and I had the windows rolled down.  I reached over and turned on the radio.  It was tuned to a local rock station.  I reached over again to change the station, but then I stopped.  It was my sister's car, and it was her music.  I'm sure nobody had touched the radio since she had stopped using the vehicle.  I leaned back and listened to that station all the way home.

I don't think I'm chasing ghosts like Ives.  It feels like ghosts are chasing me.  Memories of my sister simply insert themselves into my days.  Tonight, driving in my sister's car again, I passed a local lake.  It was gray and rucked with waves.  As I looked at it, I could almost hear my sister singing an ABBA song, full-voiced, happy to be heading home after a long day of work.

Saint Marty wonders if his sister is nostalgic for the habits of the life she left behind.

17399 Edgewood Road, Fayetteville, Arkansas

by:  Linda Gregg

A few days before I am to move
out of this house (where you have
never been) I find myself
standing in this empty room
watching the quilt
hanging on the clothesline,
remembering the black-and-white
cows out back.  Remembering how
the soft air would come in the half-open
kitchen window.  The beauty
of the glass all clean
and the light shining through.

Adventures of STICKMAN